Chris Rock is a Genius

And I steal from geniuses:

"You know the worst thing about conservatives? Conservatives always want credit for some shit they're supposed to do. A conservative will brag about some shit a regular person just does. A conservative will say some shit like, "I support our troops." You're supposed to, you dumb motherfucker! What kind of ignorant shit is that? "I'm proud to be an American!" What do you want, a cookie?! You ought to be making America proud of you, you low-expectation-having motherfucker!"

Slow and Steady

Maybe our pals at Google aren't running their purges anymore, maybe they've gotten to some of our applications to be re-instated into the google database, but I've been noticing that a lot of my friends' blogs are slowly creeping up to higher results in google searches.

A lot of people speculated that this was just a temporary bump in the road and I hope they're correct.

The fact is that a frequently updated website that publishes information about poker (which really is not mine anymore. I barely remember how to play poker. If I ever did. Make your own jokes!) SHOULD rank high on google searches. You know it. I know it. Google damn well ought to know it.

Hoyt Corkins Robbed

What kind of neighbor is Hoyt Corkins?

From LasVegasVegas:

Well known professional poker player Hoyt Corkins was the victim of a burglary at his Spanish Trails home in Las Vegas. The easy going Corkins had been away from his Vegas residence in the upscale gated Spanish Trails neighborhood for about a month when friends discovered the break-in and called him back to Las Vegas.

The crooks not only ransacked the residence but gathered up his trophies and poker memorabilia before leaving the scene. The poker goodies taken included a WPT bracelet and his two WSOP bracelets - 1992 $5K Pot Limit Omaha, 2007 $2.5K No-Limit Hold'em 6 Handed. The thief (s) also absconded with two cars, a motorcycle, electronics and more than $10K in cash. Corkins told Las Vegas Channel 8 News his losses were more than $100,000 and counting.

They also stole his identity by using his office phone to get a credit card in his name.

I know some of those gated communities are somewhat secluded, but come on! When I went to Florida for a week this summer I had a neighbor go by the house every couple of days and check the house and make sure everything is okay. You know, check to make sure nobody's turned on the hose, nobody's kicked in the door, broken any windows, whatever. It takes about two minutes, and my neighbors seem happy to do it. I do it for them when they're out of town. And I can guarantee you that you can't get $100,000 (and counting!) out of my house. Hell you'd be lucky to get five grand for everything in my house...I guess I'm not materialistic. Or I'm poor. Whatever.

Corkins is gone for a MONTH from a house that has a hundred grand worth of stuff in it and someone eventually discovers the place has been ransacked? I hope the details are wrong and all this happened the night before it was discovered or something. But right now the story makes it seem like the break-in was weeks ago and is just now discovered.

No alarm system is mentioned. Maybe it was circumvented? Who lives in a gated community then doesn't have an alarm system? Something really doesn't add up here. Is it just a case of someone who thinks something can never happen to them? Maybe it's just a worst case scenario. They forgot to set the alarm, unreliable neighbor didn't check very often, left the back door unlocked...something!

Anyway, I don't mean to kick poor Hoyt when he's down, but jeezus, it sounds like this could have been avoided multiples of ways that didn't happen.

Philosophy

Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned. - Anonymous

TS Fay

Some of you might remember a picture I took of the dock at night in Jacksonville Florida.



Here's what it looks like after Tropical Storm Fay came through.



Luckily the water receded before it made it to the house. Lack of power was pretty inconvenient and there's a lot of clean up and landscaping to do, but nobody's hurt and there's no significant damage.

Coffee Worship

I remember a time in my youth when the coffee industry was suffering such hard times that they ran advertisements telling young people to "Be a part of the coffee generation!" I even remember they used an upbeat Electric Light Orchestra song called "Hold On Tight" that you hear on Honda commercials now.

Wow does marketing work! Coffee was dying. Young people saw coffee as that bitter tasting brown crap that their parents drank. It wasn't cool to drink coffee, that was for old people.

Then the mighty LATTE was born. Or at least it suddenly became popular. Chocolate milk with some coffee flavor to it to get the kids used to it. Shots of caffeine added to make it more addictive. Suddenly everyone you saw on television was carrying a cup with a plastic lid on it and a cardboard wrapper around it so they wouldn't burn their hands.

Especially targeted are young adults that are too young to drink. Go hang out in a coffee shop, you can be just like the cool kids from "Friends!" Maybe there will be some beatniks there! Woo! Get them started early. You can't have alcohol yet (in public, at least) but you can have this other drug. Help yourself!

I sit close to a community coffee pot, so I listen to coffee conversation all day at work. Those that drink the brown stuff that comes from those machines are the degenerates. They need the drug, and they don't care what form it comes in. More often the others bring in the cardboard sleeve variety from outside. You can hear them suck air through the tiny plastic hole in the top. Outside coffee is MUCH cooler than that brown muck from a 20-year-old disgusting pot.

And they love to talk about it. "Have you tried the hazelnut?" "I had to have an extra shot today, or I'd never make it!" "I can't believe you don't drink coffee, how do you make it through the day?" "I think I'd die if it weren't for my morning coffee."

No, in fact you won't. You just won't be a fucking addict. You'll have headaches for a few days. You'll feel like you have low energy. But it's not real. You have plenty of energy. Your body just wants its fix, and it's trying to fool you into giving in.

Everyone has vices, and I don't begrudge anyone for doing whatever they want to their bodies to make them feel however they want. Just stop trying to convince me that your fat filled, whipped cream topped, overpriced caffeine addiction is "cool." Coffee is not cool. No matter what the marketing says.

Death

I Read Ed Brayton, and You Should Too

Here's why.

Ed is guest blogging over at The Agitator while Radley is on vacation. Ed introduces himself as follows:

For those who do not know me, a brief introduction is perhaps in order. My name is Ed Brayton and I am the voice behind the blog Dispatches from the Culture Wars. I am also the co-founder and president of Michigan Citizens for Science and a Fellow with the Center for Independent Media.

Perhaps most germane to this blog, I am also the plaintiff in a FOIA lawsuit against the U.S. Trade Representative regarding the WTO settlement that the Bush administration signed with Canada, the EU and Japan over our online gambling laws. Radley has written about this issue a great deal. In fact, it was on this blog that I first read about the settlement, which may cost American consumers something on the order of tens of billions of dollars to preserve the government’s ability to prevent Americans from gambling online. I immediately filed a FOIA request for a copy of that settlement, arguing that we certainly have a right to know how much of our money the government is willing to spend to prop up their authoritarian anti-gambling scheme. The USTR denied the request, claiming that the settlement was classified for national security reasons. That being patently absurd, I appealed and was again denied. I filed a federal lawsuit, which is ongoing as we speak. My attorney filed our reply to the government’s response brief last week and we should have a ruling in the next few months. Perhaps I’ll post more about that over the next few days.

–Ed Brayton

Engineer Sex

Dude, based on the engineers I work with, you need to have sex whenever you can.

RIP Skip Caray

Father of Chip, son of Harry. Skip Caray always sounded like he was having more fun than anyone else at the Braves game, even if he sounded like a curmudgeon. Skip brought a level of intelligence and humanity to his job that Harry lacked and Chip hasn't mastered yet. Skip's real name was Harry Caray Jr., and his greatest feat was distinguishing himself from the reputation of his legendary father. In my opinion, he surpassed it.

Rest in peace, Skip.

Tough Economy Hits Vegas

Now THAT'S a bargain.

Seige

Apparently now our "friends" at Google have frozen Dr. Pauly's web sites and he is unable to update them until the investigation is over.

What is he being investigated for? Being a spam site.

That investigation should take about 3 seconds.

I suspect he'll be moving to his own URL in the near future.

UPDATE: See Pauly in Exile for the full story.

UPDATE2: Al Can't Hang is frozen too.